High Crimes & Misdemeanors: Presidential Impeachment in the Age of Trump

The talk will draw on Prof. Bowman’s recently published book, High Crimes & Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump (Cambridge Univ. Press 2019), to examine the British and early American origins of impeachment, the decisions of the Framers in adapting the ancient impeachment device into the American constitution, and the relatively few federal applications of the impeachment tool since 1787. It will focus particularly on the lessons of the impeachment crises involving Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, and will close with observations about the application of history to allegations of impeachable behavior by the current President.

The featured speaker is Frank O. Bowman, III, Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law 

Professor Bowman is a graduate of Colorado College (1976) and Harvard Law School (1979). He served as a Trial Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., as a Deputy District Attorney for Denver, Colorado, and spent three years in private practice in Colorado. In 1989, Professor Bowman joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he was Deputy Chief of the Southern Criminal Division and specialized in complex white collar crimes. In 1995-96, he served as Special Counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C. 

In 1996, Professor Bowman began teaching. In addition to his current appointment at the University of Missouri, Professor Bowman is Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and has taught at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Washington & Lee University, Wake Forest University, Gonzaga University, and the University of Denver.

In July 2019, Cambridge University Press published his latest book, HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS: A HISTORY OF IMPEACHMENT FOR THE AGE OF TRUMP. He has also written about impeachment in legal journals and for popular outlets such as Slate, where he is a regular contributor. He is co-author, with Roger Haines and Jennifer Woll, of the treatise, FEDERAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES HANDBOOK (ThomsonReuters 2019). He is a frequent contributor on criminal justice topics to national law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, and is a member of the editorial board of the Federal Sentencing Reporter.